The Nation

The CIA knew about a North Korean smuggling operation involving American helicopters but failed to stop it, possibly giving the communist nation a dangerous new military option, NBC News reported. The network aired photographs of new helicopters made by Hughes Aircraft Co. of Los Angeles being unloaded and reassembled at a military airport in North Korea and said they were the first of 86 choppers smuggled out of the United States by North Korean agents between 1983 and 1985.